


recovery

by plaidnutmeg



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Hospitals, M/M, Nanami Chiaki - Deceased, Sick Komaeda Nagito, Sort of a character study, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:28:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27410464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plaidnutmeg/pseuds/plaidnutmeg
Summary: Indulging myself in a KomaHina centric character study on Hajime Hinata and how others may know you before you know yourself.----“There are only three possible endings —aren’t there? — to any story: revenge, tragedy or forgiveness. That’s it. All stories end like that.” - Jeanette Winterson----this is my attempt to make you cry. i have proofed this several times, so i believe most errors are taken care of. word choice is often highly specific and intentional :)
Relationships: Hinata Hajime & Komaeda Nagito, Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito
Comments: 12
Kudos: 99





	recovery

**Author's Note:**

> Gypsophila - "The scientific name Gypsophila originates from the Greek gypsos meaning, “chalk or gypsum,” and philein meaning, “to love.” It is often thought that this name comes from the plant's love of gypsum-rich soil. Baby's Breath has many different meanings, the most common being everlasting love and innocence."  
> Source: Flower Shop Network  
> \----  
> if you want the playlist i had on repeat while writing this, you can find it:  
> [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Qg070jw3SRLYfFb6cWCbd?si=hsc9UGfZQFCRx2NnHP67eQ)  
> alternatively, listen to 'to build a home' by the cinematic orchestra on loop :)

_The universe can’t take something away if you never had it in the first place. So what’s the point in cursing the sky? There is none._

For the first time in a year, Hajime walked away, walked out of a hospital room, this time not only leaving behind Komaeda’s cold body, but also all the hope that went along with it.

\----

“There are only three possible endings —aren’t there? — to any story: revenge, tragedy or forgiveness. That’s it. All stories end like that.” - Jeanette Winterson

\----

The way Komaeda spoke after waking up from the simulation reminded Hajime of a baby trying out their first words.

_“Hajime.”_

The island was nice enough. The entirety of class 77-A had elected to stay there on account of their ‘actions’. In Hajime’s opinion, Future Foundation should have been doing way more accommodation than the monthly check-ins. Then again, it wasn’t Makoto Naegi’s fault that the Ultimate Everything had more issues than the actual Ultimate Therapist could deal with. It’s hard to be therapized when you end up therapizing your therapist instead. Ugh. Hajime shut down his useless train of thought.

As expected, tensions were high for a good while after wake-up. Certain students who had undergone truly brutal deaths/executions - Pekoyama, Komaeda, Nidai, Saionji - needed extra attention both physically and mentally. Forgiveness was tangible in an unreachable place. What a cruel joke it was, trying to ‘relive the memories’ on the soul-sucking island in a ‘positive light.’ Tears and shuffled heads lived in a city of tiny lights. For days, nobody talked above a whisper. Even the sounds of footsteps were muted, as if they were laying flat on the thinnest part of an ice lake, hoping they wouldn’t crack. Sleeping was initially impossible over the sound of someone’s panic attack triggering another person’s PTSD flashback. Thus, the cabins were soundproofed by the second week of rehabilitation. Progress, right? That’s what it was all about. Oh, and atonement for sins of the underdeveloped minds that 15 teenage students hadn’t been able to control.

  
.

Hajime’s shoes crunched on the gravel path leading into the city on the fifth island, and the stale wind made him wrinkle his nose. Were these really his shoes? Or had Izuru Kamakura bought them. Made them? How do you amend the fact that you are two completely different consciousness-es in one? The therapist had tried to explain Hajime’s condition in terms of DID, but a little voice in his now-perfect brain had told him that she was wrong. After all, he didn’t _switch_ consciousness. It was more, having a PTSD attack any time he used one of his talents. So Hajime didn’t. 

Dimly he wondered what the rest of the reserve course would think of him now. Maybe what Chiaki would think of him- or, really, what she _had_ thought of him. In those final moments before she died she must have thought _something_ . Hajime kicked at a small stone. Was it disrespectful to want to know what went through her head? Other than a spear, of course. A-ha, classic Ultimate Comedian talent. Always providing humor at the _best_ times. Maybe this was how Hajime would cope, now. With the tens of thousands of voices in his head, clamoring over one another to supply him with information from a talent that he never felt the achievement of perfecting.

Hajime pressed his fingernails into his palms inside his pockets as he shuffled to a stop in front of the warehouse. Damn, this was the third time this week he had ended up here. Maybe it’s something about ‘climax’ that the human brain is drawn to. The dusty spiderwebs along the crumbling building seemed to agree: they bobbed lightly in the breeze. It was funny; the one place on the maltreated island that emulated the wreckage of the game, and Hajime to it was a fly on honey. Something about a mastermind, something about being a leader.

 _I’m so sorry, Chiaki_.

  
.

Bright colors and flamboyant smells bombarded Hajime as he made his way to the dining hall. The fryer had been immediately tarped over for Teruteru’s sake, and the little cook was most likely busy attending to everyone in the building. As he indifferently began to scope out this morning’s social turnout, Hajime glanced compulsively to the foosball table, half-expecting to see a cat hoodie hunched over with a determined glare at the game.

Someone politely cleared their throat behind Hajime, causing him to turn around.

“Oh, my apologies, Hinata-kun. I was just wondering if I might get by to use the stairs? If not, I totally understand,” Komaeda said solemnly. Hajime just looked at him for a moment.

“What? Yeah, go ahead. I don’t care,” he shrugged after he’d stared long enough. Komaeda bowed slightly as Hajime moved to the side to let him through. Komaeda scurried up the stairs with turned in shoulders and a lowered head.

He’d brushed his hair that morning, Hajime noticed.

.

Breakfast was fine. There were a few different discernable dispositions at a month after the game had ended. Some were still in shock. Others clung to someone they had found. Still others had rebounded and were joyous as ever. Multiple people fell into more than one group, and of course some ricocheted between each. Among those who had quickly recovered were Owari, Nevermind, Saionji, and Souda. Although, Hajime couldn’t help to wonder which of those were putting on a brave face. He yawned. If eating in a place of dread wasn’t already enough to cure Hajime’s appetite, the constant bombardment of the Ultimate Nutritionist’s comments certainly was. He ended up taking a few pieces of toast and an orange. Balance. Whatever.

Owari and Mioda were excitedly discussing their next project: sword-fighting. Pekoyama sat with her arms crossed in amusement, Hajime duly recognized. Images of little girls with crudely made wooden swords tied up with string, clicking their makeshift weapons against each other with little bouncing pigtails flitted through Hajime’s vision. What could have been. Hajime ate like a machine, not with his head turned down but rather the sides of his mouth and his eyes. Koizumi flinched a little each time the near-physical words of Mioda and Owari pinged off of each other, little reminiscent clicks of said wooden toy swords. Imposter sat with his eyes shaded over. The room hummed with small conversations, and yet nobody spoke. Ah, recovery, what a beautiful thing. Hajime’s chair squeaked as he stood and crumpled up the napkin he hadn’t used just to throw it away along with the orange peels. On his way out, he thanked Hanamura for the meal, who gave him a half smile and a little bow in return. Maybe it would have been a nice exchange if Hajime’s skin hadn’t itched, expecting a sexual comment and a wink. 

_._

After letting the door swing shut behind him, Hajime made his way to his cabin. The weather could be described as open, raw, broken and pulled apart like a pomegranate. Hajime held a hand out, maybe for a little seed to drop into. He wasn’t so lucky.

The wooden door was cold against Hajime’s calloused palm, and the sweet-thick smell of the water below the cabins attended to Hajime’s hair, nipping at his ears. The warm air of the cabin knocked against Hajime’s cheeks while he made his way towards the cabinet. He plucked the English copy of Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ from it’s little spot on the spotless shelf and slid it into his coat pocket. Stuffing his hands back into the worn jean pockets, Hajime made his way back outside. 

The door was kicked closed haphazardly. Maybe if someone stole something from him it would make him feel more alive. Like before. Not that they would - what could you steal from someone who doesn’t have anything? If someone really wanted to take what Hajime had, they would cut out his brain. Although, he was tempted to do such himself sometimes, Hajime reflected as he walked toward the tiny park area. 

A butterfly danced in front of him, shyly asking for a blink, but Hajime abstained. His eyes drifted to the little grains of sand littering the concrete path the led to the bench.

“Oh, hello again Hinata-kun!” a voice said. Hajime looked up with minisculely raised eyebrows to find Komaeda waving brightly. Hajime found himself wishing for sunglasses, just to protect from his peer’s smile. 

Hajime pulled a hand free of his pocket to give a curt wave.

“I wonder, would you sit with me, Hinata-kun?” Komaeda said curiously, pursing his lips and scrunching up his eyes like he were still smiling. Hajime pressed his shoulders down a little:

“No,” he responded deflectively. 

The bench creaked slightly as Hajime placed himself next to Komaeda.

“I can’t help but feel as though it’s been ages since we have talked,” Komaeda began professionally. Hajime rubbed his hairline.

“Cut the formality,” he said near-unkindly. Komaeda paused and nodded. He went back to pressing glue against the back of leaves and holding them against a page in his notebook until they stuck. Hajime looked over, instantaneously recognizing every type of leaf and flower there was. He narrowed his eyes and glanced away, suddenly unnerved. As though he wasn’t discomforted enough in the first place.

Komaeda smiled in a way that Hajime could hear, “It’s an honor to be sitting with someone like you.” A moment or two passed before Hajime decided to give Komaeda the gratification of a neutral answer.

“Meaning?”

Komaeda shifted a little before fixing Hajime with an open stare. Hajime didn’t have to turn to the other to know exactly what the picture might look like. He could probably paint it from where he was sitting.

“Well, you did a wonderful job of ending the game. Better than I did,” Komaeda said in a self-deprecating, light grin. 

“I did a better job of starting it, too, didn’t I?”

Komaeda’s smile slipped in the way that an elbow might slip off of the rounded edge of a marble counter. He replaced it as soon as it fell, just like everyone else who had the decency to pretend they were alright after the game.

“You weren’t yourself, though, so I wouldn’t push blame. Nor do _I_ blame you,” Komaeda began with the perpetual reach of a blind pedestrian without a walk-stick.

Hajime exhaled, “Don’t insult me, Komaeda.”

“I shouldn’t dare.”

A leaf or two drifted down from the tree, rooted in concrete, across from the bench. Orange, green, brown, dust.

“What did it feel like?”

Hajime’s face hiccuped. It split into a little smile, which of course Komaeda would catch. Something about silent understanding. Komaeda’s eyes poked into Hajime from the side. There was no smile from Komaeda upon having made someone laugh, as a normal friend group might happen. Hajime was quite sure there was no tightness in the blonde’s chest from the knowledge that someone was laughing - albeit morbidly, forlornly - at something he said.

“I watched her bleed out in front of me.”

Komaeda ducked his head, as if to say, _‘Twice, yes.’_

Hajime continued, the tiny little smile plastered onto his face like the sticky residue of a sugared donut when one forgets to grab a napkin.

“She died right in front of me and I knew exactly how to stop it.”

Komaeda let his head fall back, and looked with unyielding eyes at the bright blue sky, “Would it make you feel better if I screamed and called you the things that I’d like to?”

Hajime’s smile slowly burnt out and he turned to Komaeda, finally. Whose eyes were still stricken at the sky.

“Yes.”

Komaeda’s lips stretched into a lazy, open-mouthed smile.

“Alright, then I won’t.”

Hajime turned his head towards the ocean, and the bench creaked in loss. Komaeda didn’t look back, and Hajime didn’t have to watch him go to know it. The work of preposterous faux poignancy and patronization to the masses sat heavily in Hajime’s pocket, preaching it’s excited mewls of loneliness to a choir with brown hair. 

  
  


.

Hajime lowered his tingling knuckles from the door and waited. The door opened at an uneven pace, slow-fast-slow. Surprise kicked into Komaeda’s expression a moment long enough for Hajime to grasp, and then the blonde’s eyes lowered as he rearranged his face into a smaller kind of self-preservating confidence.

“Ah, Hinata-kun. To what do I owe the honor- and for the second time this week! Is this going to be a biweekly occurrence?”

“Brush your hair,” Hajime said idly. Komaeda’s running mouth paused on an aborted consonant as he reached up to feel his hair with off-guard eyes.

“Where are we going?”

Hajime considered. A valid question.

“Together,” he answered broadly. Komaeda smiled kindly and nodded before shutting his door. 

Hajime walked over to the railing near Komaeda’s mailbox and peered into the water. Scarred liquid rippled through the reflected face and glinting crimson of his left eye. Then the water stilled like a supporting lead during bows, holding out a grieving hand to the leading player. 

Komaeda’s door had opened again, and Hajime wondered if he could reach down and touch the water before Komaeda asked what he was doing. Instead, he turned around to walk with the blonde. Komaeda subconsciously tilted his head towards Hajime, who nodded in agreeance of the now-brushed hair.

“Together, then?” Komaeda started in the space between the sounds of shoes and water. Hajime grunted a noise of affirmation.

Komaeda followed while walking next to Hajime, never falling quite behind, yet not leading. Hajime just went, chasing the same feeling that might occur when your eyes affix on something that saturates your gaze, letting his legs work in the same mechanical drone one’s kidney might.

Hajime wasn’t even surprised to find himself slowing to a stop in front of a now all-too-familiar warehouse. 

“Well, now I’m glad I wasn’t hoping this was a date,” Komaeda said weakly. Hajime glanced over blindly and wrinkled his nose in mild discomfort at the remark.

“Come here often?” Komaeda tried again. It wasn’t funny, but it was persevering and nagging. Hajime was compelled to respond.

“Unfortunately. Reminds me of all roads leading to nowhere,” Hajime said without regard for sense. If all roads led to nowhere, then death wasn’t a place but rather a feeling where Hajime felt safe, and all roads could be considered his instinct. Komaeda hadn’t frozen up, or gotten angry and shouted, or broken down and cried. Instead, the blonde pushed the door open gently and strode into the warehouse. Hajime watched in dull impression before resignedly following him in.

If must were an actual smell, it might be described as flour and wet rocks combined. Phantom cutouts of a terrible manifestation of the terror that was Izuru Kamakura and Junko Enoshima combined slammed into each other like dominoes, trailing along beside Hajime’s walk through the warehouse. Ghosts of smoke traced a line down Hajime’s arms, and his memory squeezed the feeling until there was nothing left. Of course, a burnt building wasn’t likely to catch on fire again, just like a broken man wouldn’t stage his own death in a cruel, joke of a way again. Hajime found Komaeda running a coil of cord along his palm in the back of the building. Hajime allowed himself to study the way the shadows fell across Komaeda’s face, and the patterns in which the ends of his hair fell across his neck.

Before Hajime could gather the inclination to say anything, Komaeda dropped the rope like it had grown a rattler and hissed. 

“I guess it would be unfit to curse ‘them,’ as if the one who trapped a bunch of kids in a perfect world and forced them to kill each other _isn’t_ standing in the same room as me,” Komaeda commented offhandedly. Hajime bruskly cracked his neck to the right, then the left.

“I don’t mind,” Hajime said.

Komaeda chuckled, “You don’t mind; you deserve it? Wow, Hajime, you’re starting to sound real familiar.”

“And I expected you to be tripping over yourself in an attempt to not wet your pants at the prospect of meeting me,” Hajime cut back. Komaeda smiled with the same texture of a ripe banana peel.

“Would you prefer that?” Komaeda asked realistically. Hajime just wrinkled his nose, pulling another short laugh from the blonde.

Something about a world destroyer, something about perspective. It was Hajime’s turn to be the first one to walk away. Hajime could tell that Komaeda didn’t watch him go, and yet the brunette found himself wishing he had.

  
  


.

A bowl of eggs was placed down in front of Hajime, breaking his focus away from Souda and Tanaka's display of a testosterone-fueled argument. Komaeda sat down beside Hajime and took a bite of oatmeal without tearing his own gaze away from the scene unfolding in the middle of the dining hall.

“I don’t like wet things for breakfast,” Hajime grumbled, taking a bite of the eggs. Komaeda smiled behind his spoon.

“Who do you think is going to win?” the blonde said in more of a statement than a question. Hajime straightened, looking back up at Souda, who was half out of his seat in ironic righteousness.

“Somewhere along the line I developed the ability to understand classic English Literature,”

Komaeda interjected thoughtfully, “Ultimate Academic?” Hajime shrugged sharply.

“And I find that a common theme of a people with little hope is that battles are won as soon as the opposing sides pick their soldiers.”

Komaeda hummed, “I think Souda-kun would have a nice chance if he wasn’t such a drooling mess for her.” The little smile-hiccup happened again, and Hajime felt his head dip down in a rueful attempt to hide his softened expression.

“Does it take one to know one, then?”

Komaeda pressed a finger to his glass of water and wiped a line of sweat from the edge.

“I didn’t think a government experiment could flirt.”

Hajime rolled his eyes, “Who said I was talking about myself? Maybe you’re an inverse of Hanamura.”

“I would very much like to be indignant that you’re comparing me to him, but unfortunately I was arguably worse.”

Hajime imitated an expression he had picked up from some acclaimed American poem, tilting his chin down and raising his eyebrows while looking at the object of his confirmation.

“What was hope to you? I’ve only ever been able to see it as an idea and a gateway to pain,” Hajime asked. For the first time since the game, he felt more than Komaeda’s eyes on him. He almost shivered at the feeling of someone really _looking_.

Komaeda tore his gaze away after a second, and Hajime felt it like the dull pain of a needle coming out of a vein.

“I was grateful for the feeling that I had something to look forward to each day. I was obsessed with the notion that I might be able to live another week just on my human discipline alone. Hope was a promise of tomorrow, to me,” Komaeda said gravely. Hajime would have deflated if he wasn’t already forever made of lead.

“I wonder which one of us is the weaker,” Hajime said to nobody in particular and right to Komaeda at the same time. 

Komaeda sniffed, “Weak doesn’t fall on the same spectrum as broken.” 

Hajime considered this while he scraped the edge of his spoon against the empty egg bowl, drowning out the sound of Komaeda’s departure.

.

Blue was a nice color against Komaeda’s hair, and the hospital-issued blanket that had been haphazardly spread across the unkempt grass emulated the same sky backdrop Hajime had seen upon waking up in the game, cut out only by Komaeda’s face. The blonde’s expression came into focus the closer Hajime drew, and the outlines of Komaeda’s relaxed eyes sharpened in Hajime’s vision. Albino eyelashes rested against the fabric sky and Komaeda almost looked as though he was sleeping-

Komaeda looked up gently when Hajime’s footsteps crunched onto the grass.

-but of course, who could sleep in a place like this?

Hajime pulled the book out of his coat and dropped it into Komaeda’s now-outstretched hands before sitting down on the blanket. Komaeda looked down at the literature in his hands, blinking, processing the foreign language.

“Pride and Prejudice,” Komaeda said in English, slowly. Hajime nodded. Komaeda looked up with a smile and scrunched eyebrows. Hajime just raised his eyebrows in response to the inquisitive expression. After several seconds of staring, Komaeda shrugged and opened the book to the first page, reading loudly in messy English.

‘“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife’,” Komaeda mimed wiping sweat off his brow after finishing the first line.

“‘However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters,’” Hajime recited in Japanese. Komaeda looked up in surprise. Hajime repeated the first and second line together, for Komaeda to understand. After processing the flowery language, the blonde handed the book to Hajime and rested his chin on his fists.

“We don’t seem to be allowed to finish high school or even begin university, so what’s there to lose?” Komaeda asked. Flocks of birds lost in their journey grinned, and gaggles of flowers played telephone in the static weather. Hajime just cleared his throat and opened the book, beginning to read.

...

By the end of chapter one, Komaeda had identified the fatal flaws of Mrs. Bennet, and the ingenuity of her character as a key plot device.

“I wonder how much of the old time-y language was lost on me because of the translation,” Komaeda wondered aloud. Hajime smiled despite himself, the expression becoming familiar.

“Ignoring the possibility that you’ve just targeted my language skills, the answer is much, because Jane Austen is a mastermind.”

Komaeda looked at Hajime with a thin smile, “Mastermind?” Hajime looked away in half-humor and licked his lips before cracking the book back open to chapter two.

...

Somewhere along the road to chapter ten, Komaeda’s head had made its way to the place where Hajime’s ankle crossed, and the blonde’s eyes closed, facing up at the bottom of the book. Hajime read with steady pace, unwavering, more to the fading light in the sky than the heavy head half in his lap.

“‘Jane was already so much recovered as to intend leaving her room for a couple of hours that evening,’ and a certain Ultimate Student has resigned himself to a simple pleasure one might call sleep-”

Komaeda plucked the book out of Hajime’s waiting hands in defense. Hajime put his hands behind himself and leaned back slightly. Komaeda looked at the book unblinkingly before sitting up.

“Why did you want me to see this?”

Hajime looked at the slowly sinking sun, “I like it.”

“And not because your newfound artificial intelligence compels you to sympathize with Darcy?”

Hajime hummed and stood. His footsteps again crunched through the grass, and before he crossed the threshold from which neither of them returned while leaving, he looked back.

“I actually found myself picturing you as Elizabeth was developed,” Hajime said. Komaeda’s face didn’t change from the fake, haughty confidence that he had shown since the Final Dead Room, and he didn’t nod either. Hajime didn’t wait for a response, turning around and paralleling the end of the novel in his own way.

.

A week later, on the beach, the book was finished. Komaeda was silent upon the ending for a few minutes before getting up sharply and leaving. For a moment, Hajime felt the pull in his chest to follow but quashed it, allowing Komaeda to put the necessary distance between them as usual.

.

If recovery were defined as a way to spend your time, the amount of gaps in your memory that are refilled and rewritten, then Komaeda became a regular in Hajime’s little shop of trauma. Summer turned into winter and the scars of pixels written in hot pink faded against the pale backdrop of a constant pressure in the back of Hajime’s mind that might have been called a friend.

Spring dawned on the unrelenting island, and Komaeda showed up to Hajime’s door with a journal half bursting at the seams with pressed art.

“Today I thought we might appreciate the beauty of nature,” Komaeda said seriously, holding Hajime’s 7am gaze of skepticism. Slowly, the door creaked open, and Komaeda made his way inside holding the journal.

“So you’d been asking for mod podge in your monthly requests to the Foundation?” Hajime yawned, pulling a hairbrush from his sock drawer. Komaeda sat down on the bed and stared restlessly at Hajime’s growing collection of English classics.

“Hey, at least they’re different each time,” Hajime grumbled without turning to see where Komaeda was pointedly looking. Once he’d brushed through his short hair enough, and tried fruitlessly to push down the little cowlick that flipped up, Hajime turned around. Komaeda was laying back on the bed, holding the art book above him, staring at the pages. Hajime walked over and took it from the blonde’s extended arms, flipping through the filled out part.

“The flowers look dead,” Hajime noted. Komaeda didn’t scowl or laugh, only sat up and rubbed his hands on his knees. Hajime continued flipping through the journal. The newer additions were colorful, but the very first few pages were full of brown, crumbling flowers and leaves. Hajime gingerly turned through these, trying not to break the fragilely dead nature into a million pieces.

“I just think there has to be something symbolic within it. Somewhere, y’know?” Komaeda tossed words across the room. Hajime flipped through the last few pages of still-living flowers quickly before shutting the book. He didn’t respond to Komaeda while handing it back.

Komaeda hummed, “You disagree.”

“I didn’t say I did.”

“But you do,” came the pressing response. 

Hajime shrugged, “They’re dying.”

“I’ve died before.”

Hajime blinked slowly and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“It was horrible,” Komaeda started.

Hajime laughed, genuinely allowed his breath to take the form of hilarity, and Komaeda stopped talked immediately. He didn’t look at Hajime, but the brunette could tell that he had been caught quite off guard.

“I’ve died too. They liquified and rebuilt my brain- or at least, the equivalent of it. I don’t even know how the consciousness we call Hajime Hinata still exists.”

Komaeda scratched his cheek.

“I’d spout something about hope, but realistically it’s probably because that consciousness never left. Maybe it was like DID.”

Hajime’s smile settled a little, “You sound like the Ultimate Therapist that Naegi kept trying to get me to talk to.”

Komaeda held his hands out in surrender, “Oh, in that case I should probably stop talking. I’m sure you could solve my crippling issues in minutes, and I don’t know if you psychoanalyzing me is good for my health.”

“Seconds.”

“Seconds?”

Hajime’s smile grew tinny, splotched gray and stretched, “Sure; I’ve talked to you more than anyone else here in the past months. I could probably 'psychoanalyze you' in my sleep.”

Komaeda turned to look at him in jaded challenge.

And so Hajime found himself wishing he was only the Ultimate Liar. Psychoanalyzing someone was way more personal than he wanted to go at 7:00 on a February morning. Not to mention it wasn’t just _someone_. Sure, Fuyuhiko was back to cussing people out, albeit shakily. And Souda had found solace in Mioda, who had in turn convinced Tsumiki and Koizumi and Imposter to smile, and eventually everyone had gotten to their feet with the collectively unsteady determination of a toddler. Reliving your own life is strange. Living again just to know you’d have to end with death for the second time was crippling. Hajime wouldn’t be surprised if Komaeda had retained physical scars from his death in the game. 

“Well, Kamukura-sama? Am I about to be therapied?”

Hajime flinched not only at the surname but the suffix as well. The urge to continue rolled from Komaeda in waves. Hajime didn’t respond, nor leave. They sat in silence for a few minutes.

Something about Komaeda itched a part of Hajime’s brain that he hadn’t been aware of. The simple breathing, living, _coping_ of a human being that had been through levels of trauma rivalling Hajime’s own screamed, ‘safe.’ If feelings could have opposites - if nightmares of waist-length dark hair choking you with a pink haired maniac looking back at you from a looking glass that couldn’t be shattered - could have antonyms, they might have worn a green jacket. And yet, Hajime wouldn’t be surprised if he woke up one day and found Komaeda’s face staring back at him in the mirror. To know someone that reminds you of yourself and still not be able to fully understand why the emptiness in your chest grows heavier over time. Something about fear of the incomprehensible. 

And still, Komaeda was simple, really. Human beings grip onto opportunity and don’t let go until someone pries it out of their cold dead fingers. Hajime would know, having been both human and God within a year. Nagito Komaeda was a primal animal, sinking his teeth into the prospect of security after living a life of russian roulette served on a twenty-four hour plate. Hajime was a homo-troglodyte that tore his way through any piece of literature that the big shiny Foundation could hand him, because if nobody in Japan could tell him that life had a meaning, maybe the Americans could. So far, they hadn’t been able to.

If Komaeda wrote a book, Hajime would have read it. Although, those who write, Hajime had slowly come to understand, are those who have the most pessimistic view of the world. The general public doesn’t seem to want placating vomit of sunshine and pleasurable affirmation. To think is to squander hope, and the moment Nagito Komaeda had set foot into the warehouse within the grisly simulation, the blonde had become the epitome of all those who sold their souls to the resignation of desire. Those who crunched their bones into a square that looked, to the average man, like a profound work of literature. 

“I’d like to go to the warehouse today,” Komaeda broke the silence. Hajime stood, falling off his train of thought to instead fix his eyes on the imaginary road that would lead him to reliving the day that everything derailed. Funny, how a place could be the one thing that made a detached man feel the closest thing to emotion he’d been able to in almost a year. Komaeda pulled his jacket tight and walked briskly to the door, Hajime near behind him. The sun flicked Hajime’s forehead and he averted his gaze from the brightness while his heterochromatic eyes adjusted to the indiscriminate glare. A voice sounded vaguely in the distance, and Hajime waited a second before looking up.

Tsumiki was running unsteadily towards Komaeda, waving her hand frantically. Hajime jammed his hands in his pockets and waited for the conversation to appear.

“N-hph, hph, Nagito! I h-hph, I-I have your t-test resu- results,” Tsumiki breathed with difficulty from the combination of an intrinsic stutter and the lactic acid of exercise.

Hajime cracked his neck to the left, and not to the right. Tsumiki noticed him, and tripped over herself in greeting. Hajime just nodded back at her, which seemed to calm the nurse down. Not that Hajime cared in the slightest.

“Oh, that’s wonderful, Tsumiki-san! Would you be so kind as to tell me what the outcome was?” Komaeda crooned. Hajime fought the urge to roll his eyes at the dramatic exchange. Tsumiki glanced furtively at Hajime before whispering to Komaeda.

“I think it w-would be best if you ca- if you came to the ho-hospital, actually.” 

Hajime’s eyebrows drew close with the weight of an anvil on a wooden block. Komaeda paused and blinked slightly before starting to laugh.

“Oh, is it a worst case scenario?”

Tsumiki bit her lip before nodding with tears in her eyes. Komaeda seemed taken aback by the display of emotion, and he turned to Hajime.

“I was asked to test for lymphoma again, so I should probably go check up at the hospital. Just to make sure.”

Hajime nodded slowly, and let Tsumiki and Nagito walk away together. After a minute or two, Hajime went back into his cottage. The warehouse could wait another day.

  
  


.

When Hajime walked into the dining hall the next day, it was almost as though he had time traveled back to the second week of real life. Silence, tension, and pity. Hajime scanned the room and found Komaeda, of all people, talking to Koizumi in hushed tones. The rest of the class seemed hyperaware of Komaeda’s presence, though they had opted to ignore him for the previous seven months. Hajime tilted his head to the left and popped it, causing a few people to look in his direction. Ignoring their distraught faces, he walked to the bar to take some food. A bowl of eggs, some toast, an orange. Owari's plate was half eaten and she sat next to Mioda, staring at some game of tic-tac-toe. Hajime sat down near the two girls and began to eat. As expected, it took all of thirty seconds for Mioda to break.

“Have you heard about Komaeda?” The rockstar stage-whispered. Hajime shook his head curtly. Mioda nodded and looked back over at the tic-tac-toe board. Hajime watched them have cats game after cats game from the corner of his eye while he ate his eggs at a steady pace. The dining hall only got quieter as people departed, and a worm of doubt squeezed it’s way into Hajime’s head. 

It was almost as if someone had taken the students and thrown them into something like a mandatory killing game. Ah, Ultimate Comedian makes a reappearance. Hajime chewed the last slice of orange and folded the peels into a napkin, standing up calmly. 

Before he could get out of the bench, Mioda turned back to him and wailed, “I know it isn’t my place to say, but- b-but, _Nagito has stage nine leekomia and I haven’t finished any songs for him yet_.”

Hajime looked over at the outburst and nodded before turning back to go throw out his napkin. Komaeda’s eyes laced into the pores on Hajime’s back, but the brunette didn’t look until he had set his bowl in the sink. When he did turn, Komaeda was still gazing lazily at him from across the room. Hajime watched the emotionless mask on the blonde’s face for a few seconds before turning mutely and leaving the dining hall.

Mioda's anguished calls of beckoning followed him out until the door shut, and only then did Hajime exhale the breath he’d been holding.

.

“And now you know exactly where to find me! I believe this is a positive development.”

“It only could have progressed this far if you had been diagnosed previous to your _enrollment_ in Hope’s Peak.”

“Mmm, true. Additionally, it was already aggressive at the time of my initial diagnosis. Lucky me, wouldn’t you say?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Thank you, I _did_ put some good effort into hiding the bruises.”

“Why?”

“Did Mikan not tell you that they believed it to be benign when I woke up?”

“How could the doctor have overlooked four tumors.”

“Very easily, apparently. Also, I’m a war criminal, Hinata-kun. I deserve this.”

_No you don’t._

“Then what do I deserve?”

“What?”

“You didn’t mean to say that out loud?”

“No.”

“I see.” ... “The sun is setting.”

“Don’t pretend to be Hemingway.”

“Why, I may have merely been making an observation, might you consider?”

“I considered it, and decided that you weren’t.”

“Too sharp, you are.”

“Something about artificial intelligence, right?”

“Of course.”

  
.

Hospital rooms were one of the few places that could be described as so clean that the inhabitants immediately felt the sensation of being dirty. Ugly, perfect wallpaper and floors that may have as well been made from chloroseptic. Places like the warehouse would turn up their nose at such a sight, Hajime decided.

On an island with such a low population, the hospital was basically functioning for Komaeda. Tsumiki and (on the good days) another nurse in training scurried around like rats on a hardwood floor, tending to whatever Komaeda might need at that hour. Hajime could imagine it after the first visit. Pills, injections, and pristinely-made meals from the one and only chef were on a constant loop out of Komaeda’s room and body. What a life, Hajime thought dully. The leatherbound copy of Steinbeck’s classic novella pressed into itself in Hajime’s coat pocket as he made his way towards Komaeda’s new living quarters for the third time in a week. There was no time to grieve. Hajime had books to read, and Komaeda had profound things to say that left Hajime tossing and turning at night. Hajime rounded the corner, half-seeing flashes of a certain bear hidden in the corners. Blinking hard, Hajime pushed the door to Komaeda’s room open.

The blonde sat on the bed, a few flowers from the vase on the nightstand now strewn around him on the sheets. The TV droned quietly in the corner. No ding dongs or bing bongs, though, just a meditation music channel. Albeit likely the illusion of perception, Hajime found his gaze pulled to Komaeda’s thin frame. Of course the Ultimate Nutritionist would know that weight loss as rapid as this was not a positive sign. Upon moving closer to the bed, Komaeda looked up to meet Hajime’s eyes.

“I never know which eye to look at. I’m drawn to both of them for different reasons,” Komaeda yawned. Hajime blinked subconsciously.

“I never know if I should acknowledge the fact that your left hand makes a whirring noise every time you move it,” Hajime returned in kind. Komaeda sniffed and looked down at his mechanical appendage.

“Better than some dead lady’s, don’t you agree?” Komaeda asked. Hajime nodded and sat down next to the blonde, pulling out ‘Of Mice and Men.’ Komaeda’s face broke into a smile and he took the novella from Hajime. Like always, he cracked the first page open and began to read loudly in uncomprehending English.

“‘A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green,” Komaeda chewed the words. Hajime smiled liked always before Komaeda handed the book back to him, scratching his brow.

“One would think after reading countless novels, you’d have _some_ concept of English,” Hajime poked. Komaeda looked at Hajime and grinned messily.

“One would be overlooking the fact that a certain superhuman seems to enjoy reading them _to_ me nearly every day.”

Hajime took a breath in lieu of responding, and began to read the book in Japanese. Near the middle of Chapter Two, Komaeda’s eyes fell shut and he slumped into the brunette. Hajime’s chest did a hiccup along with his face, and he cleared his throat, continuing to read. The sun had time to whisper fervent rumors to a gullible moon before Hajime left Komaeda to sleep in peace.

  
  


.

Hajime found himself back at the hospital more than enough times a week. Obsessive, maybe. Komaeda seemed to appreciate the presence of another person. Hajime made it a point to pry the chokehold of white flowery walls from Komaeda’s bruised throat every time he arrived at the little room made of patients and patience. It might have been easier to see a countdown timer projected on the wall, or maybe to see Komaeda break down and cry a few times a week. But nothing.

“Do you think you have my Talent as well?” Komaeda asked while twirling a strand of his hair around his finger. Hajime watched him pull his finger out, bringing more than a few strands of white hair with it. The brunette looked away.

“I can’t forcefully bring out any talents without having a panic attack, and then they show up randomly on their own, but only when I really don’t want them to. Would that count?” Hajime responded. Komaeda shrugged.

“Were we on Chapter Six?”

Hajime shook his head and spoke softly, “No, not quite that far.”

“Oh, don’t go treating me like Lennie, George. I do see the parallels, though.”

“What?”

Hajime suddenly felt the need to change the ending of the book. It hit him like a tsunami and battered his eyes and boxed his ears until the ringing in his ears subsided into his throat and he swallowed to recover. 

“Nevermind, let’s just read.”

“Okay, I’m ready Hinata-kun,” Komaeda said, settling against Hajime. The latter cleared his throat and started into the third chapter of the book.

...

Nearly ten pages in, Komaeda’s breath became labored. Hajime continued reading until even the sun was stuttering in concern, peering through the clouds like a nosy relative.

“Are you alright?” Hajime asked. Komaeda just continued gasping for air, and Hajime’s eyebrows flickered in. He set the book aside and gently pulled Komaeda into a sitting position.

“Komaeda,” he said softly. The man in question choked, begging the atmosphere for relent.

Komaeda coughed an unintelligible word with pitiful volume. Hajime looked to the door, then back at Komaeda before bringing his hands to cover Komaeda’s ears gently but firm.

“ _Tsumiki,_ ” he yelled, “ _get in here._ ”

Komaeda relaxed a little after hearing the call, and Hajime absently held Komaeda’s hair while the sounds of Tsumiki scrambling through the hospital grew louder.

Less than a minute later, the nurse burst through the door, panting.

“Hajime?? Is he okay?” Tsumiki squeaked. Hajime gestured matter-of-factly to the raggedly breathing form against his chest. Tsumiki's eyes turned to saucers and she rushed to the machines and IVs and monitors. After a few minutes, Komaeda’s breathing returned to normal. Tsumiki watched with her nails to her mouth.

“Ah, sorry everyone. That doesn’t usually happen during the day. Sometimes I just have trouble breathing. It’s not a big deal, it usually goes away with time.”

Hajime narrowed his eyes.

“This has happened before?”

Komaeda shrugged, “A few times, mostly at night. You just happened to be here this time; I don’t think it’s a reason to worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Hajime jawed. Komaeda nodded against him and shut his eyes.

“Keep reading.”

Tsumiki looked between the two of them with a curious expression and left the room with a small smile at Hajime. The brunette wasn’t sure exactly what to make of the exchange, but the solid body in front of him pressed more at the corners of his mind than Tsumiki's behavior.

“You said my name,” Komaeda said lowly. Hajime stopped in his pursuit of the sentence he’d left off on.

“Huh?”

Komaeda shook a little against him, and Hajime waited for a moment before realizing the blonde was laughing. Humorlessly, but laughing.

“I think that was the first time you’ve said my name in about a year.”

Surely it wasn’t. Hajime flicked through his memory, searching for even a _single_ instance in which he had called Komaeda by name.

Ah, he hadn’t.

Without a change in inflection, Hajime picked the book back up and flicked to their page, finding the sentence near-immediately.

"’He's a nice fella," said Slim. "Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain't hardly ever a nice fella.’"

“What a childish government experiment you are,” Komaeda yawned.

Hajime couldn’t help but laugh in place of protesting that he had only been reading the line they’d stopped on. Still, he relented in his mirth in order to continue translating the story until the sun swayed on it’s feet, allowing the moon to weave a basket out of light for a young star with a pretty head. Komaeda was nothing like Lennie. Maybe in some world, Hajime had been something like George. Something about a killing game, something about a protector.

It seemed, even with countless Talents, Hajime still could not fulfill the role of the latter.

  
  


.

“They diagnosed me with dementia,” Komaeda said as he took the lollipop Hajime was holding out to him. The candy drooped uselessly in Komaeda’s weak wrist, and Hajime watched it drop to the bed. Komaeda found where Hajime was looking, and ignored it to study Hajime’s face.

“When I was 14. I believe they were wrong.”

Hajime raised his eyebrows in way of response and came towards the bed. Komaeda moved over as best as possible to make room. The nightstand was full of stale flowers, and the walls were covered in little mindless drawings that could mimic pressed nature art as well as a mouse might mimic a cat. The door was shut tightly behind Hajime, lest any unexpected suitors try to sit in on visiting time. Tsumiki shrunk into her seat at the front desk every time Hajime walked in, and after a while he had stopped waving. Komaeda pulled himself into a high sitting position, resting against the propped up pillows Hajime had arranged for him one morning.

“Reading today, then?”

Hajime hummed, “It’s been several days, so why not.” Komaeda’s lack of answer was met with the soft crinkling of an old book being opened. 

‘Chapter Six,’ the wind repeated fantastically as Hajime spoke. The clouds roiled and turned while the climax of the book took hold. Unfortunately, Hajime had not had the time nor true inclination to change the ending. At the bottom of the first page, Komaeda’s breathing had become uneven, and several short coughs interrupted Hajime’s storytelling. He stopped reading and waited for Komaeda to come around. The blonde hit his chest weakly several times before taking a large breath and gesturing for Hajime to continue.

Hajime cracked his neck to the left far enough to hurt, and began the line again. By the time Hajime had finished reading the third page, Komaeda was tense for an entirely different reason.

“George,” he whispered to the wall in front of him. Hajime watched him in a sick sort of amusement that comes with seeing someone realize what the end of a story might be like.

Still, “Would you like me to stop reading?” Hajime asked. Komaeda shook his head with a tiny smile. Hajime did as was fit.

Hajime took a breath while the body in the book turned cold before hitting the ground. Komaeda didn’t say anything, or move his head, or change anything about the way he was sitting. Hajime waited a moment before finishing the last pages.

“Isn’t it wonderful to know that even in stories, sometimes the worst-case scenario isn’t avoidable?” Was all Komaeda had to say upon finishing. Hajime’s mouth twitched, and he let the book fall shut. 

“Would you like the candy?” Hajime asked. Komaeda glanced down at the lollipop that had shifted around in the blankets and shrugged.

“I’m not hungry.”

You don’t have to be hungry to have candy, Hajime wanted to say. Komaeda responded in kind, a silent exhale. The sheets shifted above Komaeda’s legs as they twitched slightly. Hajime wished there was a tangible way to fix things, like the way one might feel the urge to smooth out the ridges of someone’s furrowed eyebrows. Hajime stood up and walked mechanically over to the monitors.

The Ultimate Doctor decided to make an appearance, guiding Hajime’s hands deftly across the different buttons and inputs. After a few seconds, Komaeda took a deep breath easily. Hajime looked over at Komaeda and watched him breath calmly for a while before walking back over to the bed to pick up the book and repocket it. Komaeda relaxed. When Hajime sat back down, he reached for the lollipop. He unwrapped it and took Komaeda’s hand, wrapping the mechanical fingers around it. Komaeda let the brunette prop his mechanical arm up so that he could eat the lollipop. Hajime grabbed a pillow and put it under Komaeda’s elbow so that he could continue eating the candy without direct help. Komaeda raised his eyebrows as if to ask, ‘what if I want to take it out of my mouth?’

“Then let it fall out and have Mikan clean the mess up later,” Hajime said callously. Komaeda nodded slightly, with the lollipop in his mouth and his head tilted to the left curiously. Hajime watched him for a moment before pulling his coat closer around himself and standing up. 

Nobody needed to tell Hajime that the chemotherapy wasn’t working. He only knew.

Komaeda, his bruises, nausea, and deathly thin frame let him walk away like always. Not that the blonde could stop him, after all.

  
  


.

Comparing his own psyche to a dog wasn’t a pretty picture, but neither was realizing that Hajime would come back to the hospital every day, regardless of how he left the day before. Komaeda didn’t yell at him, or call for Mikan passive aggressively when Hajime was apathetic. He only fell asleep against the brunette and allowed himself to listen to the American classics that Hajime couldn’t get enough of. An obsession, it might have been, but that just meant obsessions are powerful enough to control even the most unfeeling of men. What part of the sickly little room drew Hajime in, he didn’t know. A warehouse and a white clinical bed. Hajime often went to sleep with a type of vertigo that might have come from living through the same situation twice, only the second time stretched out along a few unsustainable months of citrusy dread. But to return to the existing train of thought, Hajime was a retriever and Komaeda was a home that fed him enough to guilt him into staying. Then again, maybe the guilt was internalized. Make-A-Wish foundation would have a field day with the irony of Hajime sitting in Komaeda’s room every day. Your Honor, Mr. Ultimate Hope. What nice charity work you’re doing.

Who was the charity case? Surely not Komaeda. Not the one who asked Hajime if he’d eaten well that morning, allowed an amalgamation of everything mechanical that should not be part of a human mind to lay a head of brown hair in his lap.

“Would you really have killed Imposter?” Hajime asked. Komaeda stopped braiding the flowers Hajime had brought in a begrudging paper bag. 

“Why ask questions when they're unrelated to the answer that you already know?”

Hajime considered, “Because there’s always a chance the answer I know may be wrong.”

“Well, it isn’t.” Ever.

“How did you convince yourself there was hope in death after less than a week of the game?” Hajime shot back. Komaeda didn’t answer while he started braiding the flowers again.

“I didn’t,” he said peacefully. Hajime’s teeth grit of their own accord. He pictured Mikan, cowered in her chair by the front desk at his terrible gnashing. Komaeda didn’t give him the gratification of a reaction.

“So, what, you lied?”

“Very well, apparently,” Komaeda yawned. Hajime’s face pinched itself before he schooled it back into a sure calm.

“Yes, that’s become a pattern, hasn’t it?” Hajime hummed as he watched Komaeda’s shaking fingers thread a particularly tough stem through the others. 

“Sure, I’m a regular Lennie.”

Hajime blinked his gaze over to Komaeda, where it tightened into a glare.

“You see it too?”

Komaeda smiled, “If you’re insinuating I perceived you the same way Steinbeck described George, then sure.”

Hajime closed his mouth and looked at the growing collection of drawings on the hospital room wall.

...

“Hajime,” Komaeda said after a while of silence, “this isn’t your fault.”

When Hajime stood sharply, his chair screeched against the ground. Komaeda didn’t flinch at the sound. Hajime felt Komaeda’s expectant eyes flickering against the back of his figure as he tread through the echoing halls. The sound waves bounced against his face, Tsumiki sighed from her seat - chastising the brunette for leaving, and Hajime listened deafly. Something about the way that, _this_ time, he would have come back if Komaeda asked him to stay.

_“Hajime.”_

  
  


.

Hajime spent the three days in which he did not go back to the hospital reading ‘Gone With the Wind.’ His classmates rejoiced in his sudden reappearances throughout the afternoon, and Hajime gave them a curt nod before retreating to the quietest place he could find that day, cracking open the novel.

Upon finishing it, Hajime found himself walking back towards the hospital with another handful of wildflowers. He hadn’t bothered to put the book away, but Komaeda didn’t seem to mind either way when Hajime entered wordlessly through the little white door.

“Is the weather nice today?” Komaeda asked while Hajime walked over to the monitors to switch around a few things.

“I’m sorry,” Hajime said through his teeth before taking the pad of his thumb off of the last button.

Komaeda didn’t pull his gaze from the horribly smooth wall, “No you aren’t.”

“Okay.”

Hajime handed Komaeda the ragged bouquet of color before sitting down on the bed. Komaeda sorted through the flowers gently before letting Hajime’s head rest on his lap. Once his flowers had been sorted into colors and lengths, they were placed aside.

“What did you read?”

Hajime pulled the book out of his pocket and handed it to Komaeda mutely. The blonde cleared his raw throat, speaking the title.

“Gone With the Wind,” Hajime repeated in translation. Komaeda looked down at his body in humor. Hajime didn’t laugh.

Komaeda flicked through the pages at random, looking at the words in half comprehension. What have you extracted from a work with over a thousand pages? Hajime could hear him ask silently. 

After a few pages were turned above Hajime’s head, he spoke again.

“What did you want to do?” Who did you want to be, what kind of life would you have liked to lead.

Komaeda closed the book and set it aside, glancing down at Hajime briefly before leaning back against the pillows.

“I don’t get the luxury of answering that question,” he wondered. Hajime didn’t argue. Komaeda yawned and cringed slightly before bringing a hand to touch his own chest.

A shaky, rehabilitating breath, and then Hajime cut through the sound, “How could you be Ashley and Rhett at the same time?”

“Who does that make you?” Komaeda asked immediately afterward. Hajime closed his mouth with a soft click. _Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett O’Hara._

Perhaps obsession only occurred to those who couldn’t afford it.

“It makes me a fool twice over, I think,” Hajime said. A gentle hand made it’s way into Hajime’s hair, combing through the short cut.

Hajime drifted into the feeling of Komaeda’s hand before speaking curtly, “Don’t touch me.”

“Okay,” Komaeda moved his hand from Hajime’s hair and pressed his cold fingers against Hajime’s left eye. Gently, of course, and Hajime's conscious slammed against his own head.

Somewhere along this path that couldn’t really be called ‘recovery,’ Komaeda had figured out Hajime better than the latter had himself. Hajime was walking the edge of a razor. Risk: something he hadn’t felt in months. Cursing a younger version of himself for chasing the same kind of greedy meaning that Komaeda had during the game. Avarice for the peals of egg white pride that cascade down your head and shoulders when someone puts you on a pedestal and tells you that you matter. Then when you matter, nothing else matters. So if someone else mattered to Hajime, who’s to say he still held his title of ‘important?’ Komaeda, unwittingly, had stolen it from him. If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, then Hajime was a blind and beauty disguised itself as the only man who had so little regard for himself that he was able to make a superhuman think. Hajime wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘feel.’ Feeling had become a foreign notion, like what the people in a country - which you can barely imagine - are having for breakfast that morning. In the ridges of Komaeda’s fingerprints there lay a time-zone between Hajime’s self-apathy and the desire to pitch back in simple conversation. Komaeda had most likely figured this out a month before Hajime, and the latter couldn’t find it in himself to care. As if he ever could.

Hajime sat up, and Komaeda’s hand lifted from its position on his face. Hajime stood smoothly from the bed. Scarlett O’Hara seemed to follow him around in spirit, making a little home in the residual color of his left eye. Comfort found in a namesake, likely. The iris bloomed and contracted microscopically with the arrival of such a selfish character and her wordless bond in Hajime’s mind.

“I’ve promised Souda that I’d help him with something- What’s wrong?”

Komaeda’s face had abruptly twisted in fear and he held his hands out in front of himself, feeling around for something solid. Hajime moved back closer and Komaeda relaxed upon feeling Hajime’s sturdy frame in front of him.

“I can’t see,” Komaeda quietly whimpered. Hajime watched the crack in Komaeda’s indifferent facade occur. Of course, Hajime had known Komaeda felt much more easily than he did. Komaeda’s hands gripped the front of Hajime’s shirt as he blinked, trying to clear whatever phantom had guarded his sight. Hajime looked at the monitor, then back down at Komaeda. He pried Komaeda’s fingers from his shirt slowly, allowing himself to start towards the machines beeping in the corner. Komaeda’s breathing sped up.

“ _Hajime_ ,” the patient solicited terribly. Hajime didn’t respond, looking down at the monitor and leaving his hands to work mindlessly. Komaeda’s hands scrunched down on the bedsheets, then rubbed back at his eyes. Hajime finished his work on the machine in time to stride back and pry Komaeda’s scrabbling hands away from his eyes.

“Hajime, I can’t see- I can’t see anything,” Komaeda whispered with bunched up shoulders and tense hands. Hajime held the blonde’s wrists between them. 

“Stop touching your eyes,” Hajime responded staidly. Komaeda nodded wildly. Once his wrists had relaxed, Hajime dropped them and went to smooth his hands over Komaeda’s eyelids. He wiped the tears on the bedsheets and gently touched Komaeda’s eyes again. The rapid breathing coming from the patient didn’t slow down.

Hajime took a steady breath in subconscious pity.

“Nagito,” he started. Komaeda looked up at him with closed eyes. Hajime blinked at the strange sensation of being stared at from behind a door.

“I'll go get Tsumiki, because she might be able to help. I believe you've a high grade migraine.”

Komaeda spoke with the juvenile ardor of a toddler watching a snail travel across a dangerous path.

“Stay.”

Hajime, a lesser man than he gave himself credit for sometimes, but a man nonetheless, obliged. Komaeda listened quietly as the brunette settled onto the bed, laying down adjacent to him. 

Hajime may have been expecting Komaeda to cry. It was a sort of realization that occurred once the brunette recognized that Komaeda has obtained from any such demonstration. Hajime looked over to find Komaeda’s face quite dry and relaxed.

An hour later, by the time Komaeda's breath had evened out and vision had drifted into a different sort of temporary darkness, Hajime looked away. As he extracted himself from the hospital bed, Hajime wondered if the empty ice in his chest was from Komaeda’s general lack of emotional display, or the knowledge that Komaeda would likely have cried had Hajime not been present. Regardless, Tsumiki had knocked on the door quietly, signaling it was time to leave. Hajime ignored all but her request for departure, carrying the book in his pocket with a heavy mind.

Komaeda, really, wasn’t Ashley. He was only Rhett, and Hajime was a genetically perfect piece of trash that somehow had managed to lower himself to the flawed world view of a sixteen year old American girl. Jarring synthesizer ricocheted in Hajime’s head upon the divorce of his comforting belief that Komaeda was a placeholder for his obsession with meaning.

Placeholders were meant to be given and taken away without repercussion. Unfortunately, Hajime could now think of a few repercussions that might occur upon the loss of a certain constant in his new, meaningless life. The awareness of an obsession. Komaeda was something. A friend. He was there, in that little hospital room, whimpering in his dark vision. Hajime looked up at the stars, blinking at the midnight island. Something about the vague recognition that he, the one supposedly without feelings, wasn’t nearly as removed from a certain situation as he had originally hoped.

.

It was a Thursday morning, the day it happened, and the ocean had presented the daily foam to the bashful sand by the time Hajime woke up. Somewhere, a fisherman hooked the one fish in the lake that the underwater community had prayed to keep safe, and the line tugged him up fast, unforgiving. Hajime stretched his legs and brushed his hair before turning and looking at the bookshelf. There was no reason to, having had the bookshelf memorized, but if acting confident psychosomatically made one so, then it might be possible to instill a seed of normalcy in his own chest by playing mundane.

Souda greeted Hajime with great gusto on the latter's rigid walk towards the only building he would realistically be going to. The birds held their tongues so that the flowers might bend over to hear what the wind was sourly whispering. Hajime’s hair tousled itself against the steady brushing he had committed not an hour earlier, and he walked with his hands in his pockets.

Komaeda’s eyes were already on the door when Hajime arrived. Several more blankets had been piled onto Komaeda’s bed in the past few weeks. The shock of suddenly understanding the progress someone has made, growing or deteriorating, all at once spiked in Hajime’s lungs. His eyes found Tsumiki with static hands near the monitors. A resigned kind of static, one where there was nothing to do, rather than a panicked sort of pause.

“Today?” Hajime looked to Komaeda. The blonde just swallowed as best he could.

Tsumiki stood unsteadily, “I-I was just waiting un-until you got here H-Hinata-kun.”

Now that you’re here, I don’t have to watch, Hajime understood wearily. Tsumiki nodded and gave a little bow before pacing quickly out of the hospital room. Aborted anger from another time drifted through another Hajime’s veins.

“Some place we’ve made here,” Hajime noted, walking over to sit down next to Komaeda. The blonde turned his head minutely toward Hajime’s voice.

“Would you?” Komaeda started weakly. Hajime resisted the urge to snap his head down to Komaeda like a mother would to a distraught child.

The blonde tried again, “Would you fetch me. Us another book?”

“How do you know I didn’t bring one already?” Hajime asked. Komaeda blinked hard.

“I know.”

Would you fetch us another book?

 _Don’t be here when I die._

Hajime translated. Of course, that’s all he ever did around Komaeda. Translate things that Komaeda had understood since the moment they met. Hajime sat down gingerly on the bed and folded his hands in his lap.

“I could tell you a story,” Hajime suggested. Komaeda didn’t move. The white-blue light in the hospital room illuminated the gauntness of his face, the sunken bruise of his eyes. Hajime placed a hand on the side of Komeada’s face and traced his features.

The blankets were spotted in bright white hairs, and Komaeda’s hands were blue from the chill they were exposed to with the IVs stringing out of them.

“I’m doing the opposite of what you ask, this time,” Hajime recognized. Maybe second time could be the charm if cards were played well enough.

“I’ve lived a good lifetime of stories,” Komaeda whispered. Hajime frowned. The frigid blow of the A/C vent sauntered against the back of Hajime’s neck, making his hairs stand up on end. Tsumiki's momentary presence sent uneasy chills down Hajime’s spine.

Today. _Now_.

“Hajime?” Komaeda took that hand that was resting along his jaw and pulled it from his face.

The one in question looked to the door, “I’m not getting a book.”

“-was I a good person?”

What do you mean? You’re still a person. How can you resign yourself to a state when you’re still here, holding onto my wrist? What is a good person? Surely Hajime himself was not the right one to ask such a question, with his mass suicide and mastermind-ing of the very thing that broke Komaeda. Or it was possible that Komaeda meant his entire life, before the game, before he was broken. Komaeda had likely thought he was broken the whole time. Was this how Komaeda figured Hajime out? Hypotheticals and questions and no answers until something clicked? Komaeda was the sole reason their class was alive. Was he a good person?

“Hajime?”

Yes.

“Stay with me?”

Hajime relented, “One of the best men I know.” Komaeda’s face loosened. Hajime glanced at the pictures on the wall before Komaeda’s breath began to come in short gusts. It was as if he was standing in the middle of a dark room with no sound. The life in Komaeda’s eyes flickered with every second he wasn’t pulling in a breath. No pages were turning, no enigmatic conversation was occurring. Only Hajime and his itchy arms, the type of itching that begs to hold something. Half of Hajime was averted to touching a dead man, and the other was stubborn to prove his point from earlier that Komaeda was not a dead man yet.

Nagito was so much more than a not-yet dead man.

Hajime folded his arms around Komaeda as best he could without crushing the already delicate ribcage. Something about atrophy.

On the whistling of the island breeze outside the hospital, Hajime felt the heart beneath his embrace run. His blood pounded in his limbs, neck, chest. When he came up to look at Komaeda’s face, a smile played across the blonde’s lips, and he was gone. Hajime watched mutely before squeezing the cold form and standing up. Tsumiki watched Hajime walk out of the room, for once staring directly at him. The brunette’s face was stone, and he made it to the door without Tsumiki interjecting.

_._

For the first time in a year, Hajime walked away, walked out of a hospital room, this time not only leaving behind Komaeda’s cold body, but also all the hope that went along with it. 

Nobody was near the hospital, and those that might have been adept at sensing aura would have felt a radius of anguish that slunk into any corner Hajime appeared near. And walk he did, until he reached a place at which he might turn around and look into the distance, and not be able to see the hospital building. Except he didn’t turn around, and he didn’t stop. Because he suddenly couldn't stave off the sky as it came crashing down upon him. He might have tried, he thought in small bits, but he wasn’t so lucky, and he looked up to find the endless blue waving back at his breaking irises. 

Almost as if he had walked directly into a cutscene, a wormhole, timeskip. He was staring at his cabin door, and it was all he could do to let his hands guide him, pushing through across the threshold The room hadn’t changed: his bed was still made. The wind that had blown Komaeda away hadn’t ruffled any of his pillows, or the books, or the pens in the cup on his desk. Hajime stumbled into his room while keeping his footing perfectly, because genetic perfections don’t get to feel the way a regular person might trip in grief. Putting an unnecessary steadying hand on his desk, Hajime pulled open the drawer for a pad of paper.

Instead, he found a certain journal looking up at him. Surprised it wasn’t covered in dust, Hajime pulled the book out with too-steady hands.

The flowers, he noted, had all finally turned brown. Hajime considered that they may have lost their grip on the world not even twenty minutes prior, as their human counterpart left nobody and everybody behind at the same time. Hajime pressed his hand to the last page. Gypsophila, murmured the Ultimate Florist. 

It occurred to him, then, that the world, _his world_ , may have been flipped upside down all along. The possibility arose that maybe he had been feeling everything the entire time. Is that what Komaeda had figured out? Was that the secret to how he always knew Hajime better than the man knew himself?

An unresolvable idea; the capability to know that someone loved you before they realized it themselves. Hajime closed the book tightly, wrapping the elastic band around it again to keep it shut. He walked over and gingerly placed it on the second to highest shelf - not to be forgotten, but emphasized.

Out of reflex, how one might scratch an itch that bothered them for too long, Hajime pressed his palms to his eyes. When they came back wet, he stumbled, truly, like he had used to. Two years ago? Three? Four. And in such a stumble, Hajime turned. His face caught in the mirror, no longer stony, or even hiccuping, but cracked. And everything poured out, twisting his features into something that fit his hazel eye more than his red one. Hajime pushed the door open with ringing ears, and went blindly. His hands were somewhere, anywhere but his pockets.

His heels hit the ground louder than he had allowed them to since the ugly beast dubbed, ‘recovery’ had started. The hospital flickered in his vision, and he went past it. Far, far, from the place where he had known for so long, too long. For nothing, for everything. The island pushed him on, willing him towards the place that his eyes drew shut in order to go.

Hajime pitched through the disgusting, dusty, smokey door and found himself in the middle of the room he hadn’t felt the pull of for as long as Komaeda had loved him.

Sinking to his knees in the middle of the warehouse, Hajime Hinata let himself cry. For what was lost in years, for what was lost in months, for what was lost in hours.

Somehow, he felt Komaeda listen.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hajime hinata as a character is on the same level of complexity as nagito komaeda and kokichi ouma. in this essay i will  
> comments are always so appreciated ily :))  
> \----  
> my tumblr: plaidnutmeg.tumblr.com  
> my ask box is always open: https://plaidnutmeg.tumblr.com/ask


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